Professional Documents
Culture Documents
net/publication/350942518
CITATIONS READS
4 887
6 authors, including:
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Rainfall Forecasting in Sub-Sahara Africa-Ghana using LSTM Deep Learning Approach View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Oscar FAMOUS Darteh on 17 April 2021.
Abstract—The indicators of the size and development of an exportation, most output in developing countries is for
economy are dependent on its production and consumption of consumption. Most developing countries have suffered
electricity, so electricity theft contributes to slow economic growth. undesirable economic consequences to meet the demands of
Although few countries gain profit from electric power electricity for real estate and industrialisation due to electricity
exportation, most production is for consumption. But recently, theft. According to the World Bank's development indicator
utility authorities are facing a considerable amount of losses. We collection, the percentage of distribution and losses due to
can divide the losses into technical losses (TL) and non-technical transmission in Ghana was at 23% in 2014, gathered from
losses (NTL). Technical losses are in-built in the network and are
officially recognised sources [2]. Reducing transmission and
curbed to a considerable level; the remaining is due to the power
distribution losses is the greatest challenge to power utility
dissipation of conductors and other equipment on in the
distribution and transmission network. NTL happens due to
authorities.
inaccuracy of metering, electricity stealing or theft and energy We can categorise the losses in to technical (TL) as well as
unmetered. Detecting electricity theft is a nightmare most utility non-technical (NTL) [3]. Technical losses are in-built in the
authority. It is against this draw-back that our paper seeks to system which is reduceable to an appreciable level; the
deploy Internet of Things based Electricity theft detection Using remaining is due to power dissipated in equipment and
Raspberry Pi. Researchers have predicted a volatile hike in the conductions used to for the distribution and transmission
quantity of “things” or devices connected to the internet. The
lines[4]. NTL happens due to inaccuracy of metering, stealing
utility sector must take advantage of this technology to improve its
or theft of electricity, as well as energy consumed but
losses. This research’s design architecture is to detect any illegality
that occurs between the utility serve and the energy meter at the unrecorded by the energy meter [5]. Electricity theft is the
customers’ premises. The system could be monitored in real-time energy consumed by a customer that is unaccounted for or not
over the internet by the utility authority. measured by the energy meter. Theft of electricity happens due
to meter tampering, meter bypassing, and service lines tapping
Keywords— Internet of Things; Electricity Theft Detection; to the customers’ premises. Due to the deficiencies in the
Raspberry Pi metering system and the lack of transparency and accountability
in billing customers of electricity in public utilities, customers
I. INTRODUCTION take advantage to steal electricity to avoid paying the realistic
Internet of Things is a term used for a system where devices tariff. Electricity theft causes a very high negative impact on the
are given IP addresses, and everybody makes the device financial status of power distribution and utility companies,
recognisable on the internet via that IP address. The web, which which puts pressure on the future investment of the power sector.
started with the internet of computers, is developing. The ripple effect is that the losses incurred due to the theft are
Researchers have predicted a volatile increase in the number of passed as the cost to the paying consumers in either poor quality
sensors, devices or “things” connected to the internet. The service and higher tariff [6]. Reports suggest 25 per cent of
product network is known as the Internet of Things (IoT) [1]. Ghana’s current annual average losses are due to electricity theft
IoT has the propensity to alter people’s lifestyles. People prefer [7]. However, the emergence of smart grid technologies has
to monitor things through automatic systems in today’s world informed researchers to utilise the smart grid platform to detect
rather than through any manual system. The Raspberry Pi and and monitor electricity theft. Our research proposes a
the relay, together with the circuitry driving the system, are the generalised IOT based design using raspberry pi to detect
main elements of the IoT-based electricity theft detection system electricity theft by comparing the recorded values of current at
introduced in this paper. The indicators of the size and the utility service intake to the recorded value of current at the
development of an economy are dependent on its production and energy meter intake. The result of the compared values is stored
consumption of electricity, so electricity theft contributes to on the firebase server, which is accessible in real-time. The
slow economic growth. Although few countries gain profit from paper is structured as follows: Methods employed by fraudsters
electric power exportation, most production is for consumption. in electricity theft are described in section 3; Literature works on
Although few countries gain profit from electric power electricity theft detection is described in section 2; In chapter 4,
our proposed detection system including the general design. A power theft detection and automated bill management system
Lastly, we present the conclusions with future related work in using the Arduino microcontroller and Electric Power theft
chapter 5. detection and location Tracking using IOT were proposed by
[16]-[17]. In order to find the power theft and automated billing
II. RELATED WORKS system, they used a current sensor and voltage sensor.
In this section, we review the existing and proposed designs for
electricity theft detection.
III. METHODS EMPLOYED IN ELECTRICITY THEFT
A. Existing Designs In most cases, electricity is supplied from the utility
In [8], the theft detection system has two current distribution service lines to the energy meter installed at the
transformers: one at the input and the other at the energy meter’s customers’ premises.
output. Any difference in the input and output values of current
transformers is considered as power theft by the user. The Fig.1 shows a typical distribution service line. The two
system was designed with the help of power line communication leading electricity operators in Ghana, the Electricity Company
technology. Md. Umar Hashmi and Jayesh G. Priolkar’s [9] anti- of Ghana (ECG), introduced different types and versions of
theft energy metering system explored advanced metering energy meters in its quest to reduce electricity theft. We can
infrastructure (AMI) using PLC technology. A handshaking describe these meters as devices that calculate the quantity of
operation between the two AMI residential meters (M1 and M2) electrical energy used by a customer of electricity or any
sends data to the central server at the utility authority’s premises. powered electrically. Generally, we categorise the types of
The quantity recorded is the KWH value. The relationship is energy meters used in Ghana into two, namely, Whole Current
found by comparing the consumption between the two meters. meters (WC meters) and Transformer Operated (TO meters).
The PLC communicates the frequency of the filtered signal Our research focuses on WC meters due to their percentage use.
between M1 and M2 to the server. Any distortion in signal This section discusses these meters and the methods deployed
means theft or illegal connection. Vinay N. and Shubham R by consumers to steal electricity.
[10]. proposed a microcontroller-based framework utilising
ATmega32. Current sensor one records the transmitted source A. Whole Current Meters
current, and current sensor 2 records the substantial load current. These type of meters are fixed directly at the intake of the
The slave transceiver of both transmits computerised customers’ load—these meters are commonly utilised for
information to the master transceiver of primary microcontroller residential and commercial customers who require low energy
atmega32, which persistently screen the information obtained for operation. The WC meters, based on technology, are
from both the sensor and at the same time show it on LCD. If, classified into Electromechanical and Electronic meters.
perchance, that any undesirable load is found between any of the
sensors, the current measured by sensor one will be more than • The Electromechanical Meter’s mode of operation is by
the current measured by sensor 2. The master microcontroller counting the revolutions of an electrically conductive
detects this error, and the microcontroller commands the GSM aluminium disc, which spins at speed equal to the meter
modem to send an alarm message to the operator. records’ quantity of energy. The number of spins counted
is equal to the energy consumed. The voltage coil uses a
[11] proposed a power theft identifier using. Their system little and moderately quantity of energy, generally in the
used an embedded microcontroller to compare the difference in area of 2 watts, which is unregistered by the energy
energy consumption between two energy maters. The system meter. In the same manner, the current coil uses a little
calculates energy supplied by the distribution system on digital amount of energy which is equal to the current squared
energy meter 1. The energy consumption on the residential side flowing through it, usually close to several watts at full
is also calculated and recorded by digital energy meter 2. For capacity, which is recorded on the meter [18]. Fig.2
instance, if digital energy meter 2 is consuming eight units, this shows the electromechanical energy meter. To temper
data is stored at a smart hardware microcontroller; this data is, with this meter, fraudsters place large magnets at sides of
however, compared with the energy reading at digital meter 1. the meter to lower the aluminium disc rotation, thereby
drastically reducing the amount of electricity consumed.
The other method is drilling a hole through the meter’s
plastic case and inserting a magnetic needle to stop or
slow the rotating disc [19]. Another method is by meter
bypassing and tapping of service lines to the customers’
premises. Also, electricity thieves place sugar close to the
rotating disc in the meter to attract ants, which slows the
rate at which it rotates.
• The introduction of electronic meters curbed electricity
Fig. 1. A Typical Distribution Service line theft until fraudsters found an alternative. These meters
If the digital meter 1 records say 15 units, then the smart grid show the energy consumed on an LED or LCD screen,
two-way communication reports the theft of 5 units. A technical and others can also send readings to isolated places.
report published by [12] proposed a ZigBee-based electricity These meters work by calculating impulses and therefore
theft prevention system that uses a microcontroller to monitor have impulse ratings per kWh, which is different from
any change in the resistance value of the energy meter and show manufacturers. In addition to measuring consumed
its condition on the LCD. Other works carried out by [13] [14] energy, electronic meters can also take account of other
[15] proposed various WSN based power theft control systems. quantities of the load and incoming supply like
a) Components
• Analogue to digital converter (ADC)
• General-purpose input and output (GPIO) pin:
NodeMCU has input pins of general use with its board.
It aids the switching of LEDs to zeros and ones
digitally. It is also capable of producing pulse width
modulation.
• Serial Peripheral Interface (PI) Pins: NodeMCU based
ESP8266 hardware has four-pins.
• SPI (HSPI) for SPI connectivity. It also has SPI pins
for the contact with Quad-SPI. With this SPI interface,
we can connect any device with NodeMCU enabled by
Fig. 4. Raspberry Pi 4 Board SPI and make communication with it possible.
• Inter-integrated circuit (I2C ) pins: On GPIO pins of
• 40 pin standard GPIO header with fully backward the ESP8266, the NodeMCU has support for I2C
compatibility. functionalities.
• Supports 2 number of micro-HDMI ports up to 4kp60 • Universal asynchronous receiver transmitter pins:
• 2-channel MIPI DSI display port There are two interfaces, UART 0 and UART 1. The
• 2-channel MIPI CSI camera port firmware and the codes are uploaded inboard by the
• 4-pole video and audio ports UART0
• Decode of H.265 (4kp60), H264 (1080P60), 1080p30
• OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics 3) Relay Module: The 4- channel relay interface circuit
• Micro-SD card slot for loading operating system and board that takes a supply voltage of 5V and a driving current of
data storage 15-20milliamps for every channel is used to control different
• 5V DC via USB-C connector (minimum 3A*) types of large current equipment and appliances. It is
• 5VDC via GPIO header (minimum 3A) manufactured with high current relays that woks with 250Volts,
• Power over Ethernet (PoE) enabled 10amps AC or 30Volts, 10amps DC. It has a standard
microcontroller-controlled interface, as shown in Fig.6.
2) NodeMCU ESP8266: The NodeMCU Development
board is a firmware and development kit that is available freely. a) Components
It plays a very critical role in an open-source firmware and • Maximum output of relay: 250Volts, 10Amps AC and
development kit that plays an important role in using a few 30Volts, 10 Amps DC
script lines to design a proper IoT application [21]. This allows • 4- way relay module.
explicitly flashing from a USB port. This incorporates • Standard interface that can be operated by the
characteristics of a WIFI entry point and deployed Raspberry pi directly
microcontroller. The module is primarily based on ESP8266, • Isolation optocoupler for safety on high voltage and
which is a low-cost Wi-Fi microchip with full TCP / IP stack as ground protection.
well as microcontroller capabilities. Due to the above features,
WiFI networking with NodeMCU is very dominant. It aids
downloading and uploading of data, hosting of a web server,
can be possibly used as an access point or station. When fixed
onto the Raspberry Pi allows the entire system to be connected
to the internet for data fetch and upload.
and converted into text that will be saved onto the Firebase
server via NodeMCU. The utility Authority will have the
authorisation to monitor the condition in real-time.
Rasberry Pi 4 Relay 1
Utility Premises
NodeMCU
Cloud
Server
Consumer Premises
Energy
Relay 2
Meter
Fig. 7. Current Sensor
[9] M. U. Hashmi and J. . G. Priolkar, “Anti-theft energy metering for smart [15] R. D. Aryadevi and M. V. Ramesh, “Wireless,” in Fourth International
electrical distribution system,” in 2015 International Conference on Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications, India, 2010.
Industrial Instrumentation and Control, ICIC 2015, Maharashtra, 2015. [16] “Power Theft Detection and Billing Using Arduino.”
[10] S. N. Vinay and M. R. Shubham , “WSN-POWER THEFT CONTROL,” https://www.pantechsolutions.net/power-theft-detection-and-billing-
International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET), using-arduino (accessed Jan. 25, 2021).
vol. 04, no. 01, p. 1984, 2018. [17] A. Mahato, A. Nanda, A. K. Pal, and C. K. Singh, “Electric Power theft
[11] S. Thiruvalluvan, B. Swardheep and S. Arunachalam, “Power Theft detection and location Tracking using IOT,” Int. J. Sci. Res. Comput. Sci.
Identification system using Power Line Carrier Communication (PLCC) Eng. Inf. Technol., vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 35–39, 2018.
technique in Distribution system based on Binary Search Algorithm,” [18] E. C. o. Ghana, “Meter Types,” Electricity Company of Ghana, Accra,
International Conference on Computation of Power, Energy, Information 2020.
and Communication (ICCPEIC-2013), p. 978, 2013. J. Clerk Maxwell, A
[19] O. Yakubu and N. . C. Babu, “Type And Nature of Electricity Theft: A
Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, 3rd ed., vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon,
Case Study Of Ghana,” International Journal of Mechanical Engineering
1892, pp.68-73.
and Technology (IJMET), p. 170–179, 2017.
[12] S. Tshikomba, “How wireless electricity theft detection can assist in
[20] S. Bush, "Electronic Weekly," Electronic Weekly.com, 25 03 2011.
reducing electricity theft,” 26thAMEU Technical Convention, Tshwane,
[Online]. Available: https://www.electronicsweekly.com/market-
201.
sectors/embedded-systems/dongle-computer-lets-kids-discover-
[13] S. Sardar and S. Ahmad, “Detecting And Minimizing Electricity Theft : programming-on-a-2011-05/. [Accessed 20 09 2020].
A Review,” Peshawar, 2016.
[21] A. A. Dahoud and M. Fezari, “NodeMCU V3 For Fast IoT Application
[14] . R. V. P. Yerra, A. K. Bharathi and U. B. Desai, “WSN based power Development,” Notes, no. October, p. 5, 2018. I.S. Jacobs and CP Bean,
monitoring in smart grids,” in Proceedings of the 2011 7th International “Fine particles, thin films and exchange anisotropy,” in Magnetism, vol.
Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information III, G.T. Rado and H. Suhl, Eds. New York: Academic, 1963, pp. 271-
Processing, ISSNIP 2011, Yeddumailaram, Medak, 2011. 350.